For various reasons, gardeners will find it desirable to use composted organic material in their gardens. Conveniently, while supplementing the nutritional content of the soil, the gardener can take advantage of a composter to dispose of kitchen and garden waste in an ecological manner and exercise control over the nature of the fertilizers used in the garden. Such composting may be carried out simply by digging a hole in the garden and adding material to be decomposed to the hole. In order to create conditions which are favourable to decomposition, it is desirable for the composting hole to be covered so as to contain heat but also to provide access to the hole for regular mixing of the contents and for controlling moisture. Several container devices are known to provide such a controlled environment. The simplest form of such a container provides four side walls and a lid with bottom gates in the walls to access decomposed material at the bottom of the composter. In other cases, the container is closed and rotatably mounted in order to facilitate mixing of the contents as otherwise, this must be done manually, with the aid of garden tools.
Some tumbling composters are known in which the container is provided with a partition to divide the container into two compartments. An example of such a composter is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,837,810. In another composter described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,589,388, the partition is movable in order to adjust the volume of the compartments. In both these composters, the dividing wall or partition is intended to separate the contents of one compartment from the other. Optionally perforations may be formed in the wall for aeration. Access to the compartments is provided by respective doors formed on the side of the container. The doors provide access to the compartments so that decomposed material may be withdrawn, for example, with the use of a trowel or a shovel.
One of the problems associated with known composters is that there is very limited flexibility for selectively aging the organic waste in the compartments to adjust its residence time before discharge from the composter. Another problem which has been identified is the difficulty in removing decomposed material from the composter so that it can be used to supplement the soil in the garden and also provide more space in the composter to receive additional organic waste for further decomposition. It will be understood that it is desirable to always maintain a small portion of aged material in the composter which will have the necessary microbial mass to aid decomposition of fresh material added to the composter.